One source of information for detecting and tracking entities is wireless communication. Wireless communications are a large part of everyday life. In certain scenarios, it is desirable to track the source of certain wireless communications. For example, police officers may wish to track a suspect through that suspect's use of a cell phone. As another example, a military battlefield may offer the opportunity to track multiple signal-emitting sources from both enemy and friendly forces. In another scenario, tracking signal locations of rescue workers during times of disaster recovery can enable better coordination of efforts. Such tracking of signal emitters is part of the field of communications intelligence, which is generally described as a collection capability for interception and decoding of communications traffic.
There are a multitude of different methods for gathering data that can contribute to a determination of the location of a detected entity. One such method is the use of a plurality of radio-frequency (RF) detectors. Other methods include the use of electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) detectors, motion/proximity detectors, acoustic detectors, seismic detectors, radar systems, and numerous other civilian and military sensors. Such detectors can provide data such as lines of bearing (LOB) (i.e., a bearing angle to an RF emitter from the detector), a distance range from the detector to the emitter, time difference of arrival of a signal between two or more detectors, received power of a signal, and the like.
In a signal-rich environment, there can be a large number of signal emitters and a large number of detectors generating data about those signal emitters. One challenge in such an environment is to analyze the data from these various detectors in as rapid a fashion as possible in order to provide useful, timely tracking analysis of the location of a desired signal emitter or of a plurality of desired signaled emitters.